13 Major Mac Keyboard Shortcuts You Probably Aren't Using

While most Mac users are familiar with some keyboard shortcuts, there are some simple two-key shortcuts that many do not use that are useful in apps like Safari, the Finder and text editors. Improve your productivity today by learning some new ones.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you some major keyboard shortcuts that you may not be using. 
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So by major keyboard shortcuts I mean shortcuts that require the Command key and a single letter, number, or symbol key on the keyboard. For instance you probably use Command C and Command B for copy and paste. You probably use Command F for Find. You probably use Command A to select All and Command Q to Quit. But there are forty-nine keys on the keyboard that you can combine with Command for major shortcuts. So what are some of the other ones? It turns out some of them are pretty useful but a lot of us just don't use them. 
So let's start off with one I use all the time but I know a lot of Mac users don't use. That's Command W to close a tab or window. If you look in the File Menu in most apps you'll find Command W. In this case in Safari it's Close Tab because I have multiple tabs that are open. So if I use Command W here it closes that one tab and now if I look in the File Menu you can see Command W has switched to Close Window since there's no tab to close. I use Command W all the time to close tabs or windows and it works in just about any app. Whenever somebody talks about clicking the Red Button at the top left hand corner of the window I know what they're talking about but I actually never use that red button. I always use Command W.
Now another shortcut you'll find in just about every single app is the one to get to Preferences for that app. A lot of us are used to going to the App Menu here at the top and then looking for Preferences. But Command and Comma is almost always the keyboard shortcut for this. So if you get used to using that you never have to go up to that menu to find Preferences. Now a lot of us know that you can use Command Tab to bring up the App Switcher and switch to other apps. But if you have multiple windows open in the same app you could switch between those windows. Let's open up a new window here in Safari. You could see now I've got two windows. So to switch between these I'll use Command and the back tic key or the kind of opposite of apostrophe. On US keyboards it's the key to the left of the one. So use Command and that and you'll switch between windows in the same app. That's pretty universal for any app that has multiple windows open. 
Now out of all these I'm going to talk about this is the one that I think most people already use but a lot of people still don't. So I want to mention it. It's Command H to Hide the app. You can find that by going to the App Menu and you'll see Hide and the name of the app as Command H. Use that and it hides the entire app. It's still running. It just gets rid of the windows so you don't see them anymore. But if you were to use the App Switcher to switch back to it the windows just reappear. It's just hides all the app's windows. Far too many people use the yellow button or Command M to minimize a window into the Dock or they Quit the app entirely when it's much better to just use Command H to hide the app especially if you plan on going back to it soon. Memory management on Macs is excellent. So if you're not using an app and it's hidden it's not going to be using much memory. It's perfectly fine to keep apps hidden for hours at a time so you can get back to them quickly, have the same windows open in the same positions and continue to work there. I regularly have apps like Mail, Safari, Notes, Reminders, and others open running all the time just hidden. I switch back to them whenever I need them.
One of the apps that most people use all day long, even though you might not think of it as an app, is the Finder. There are some major keyboard shortcuts that a lot of people don't use and really should all the time. For instance, one is to use Command and Up Arrow to go up. So for instance if I were to go down into this folder here and I want to go back up just Command Up Arrow takes you up a level. Another one is when you do Finder searches. You do Finder searches all the time and when you get the search results you can double click on the file to open it, you could see the path here at the bottom if you want. But in a search result you could use Command R and it will jump to the location of that file which a lot of times is exactly what we want to do when we search for a file. The same thing works in Spotlight. Select a document or file in Spotlight and use Command R it will jump to the location of that file. 
Now there are, of course, four different views in the Finder. You could switch two them here in the  Menu Bar. You can switch between Icon View, List View, Column or Gallery View. It's really useful to be able to quickly switch views when doing different things in the Finder. But it's a hassle to always go up here and select one so a lot of people like to stick with one view. But the keyboard shortcuts to switch views are pretty simple. You could see them under View here, Command 1, 2, 3, 4. So if you get used to using those keyboard shortcuts it's really quick and easy to switch between the views. To use the one that makes the most sense at that moment.
Another keyboard shortcut I want to mention in the Finder is if you go to View and there's Show View Options which seems to be a really obscure command all the way down at the bottom of the View menu. But if you use the keyboard shortcut 
Command J it's easy to get to. This gives you a ton of great options to make each Finder view better for you. It changes with each view. So here I am in the Icon View and you could see my options. But if I switch to List View you could see I have different options, different options in Column View and Gallery View as well. 
Now my next three shortcuts involve Searching in Text Apps. So I'm going to use Pages but the same thing works, say, in an app like TextEdit or just about any app that handles text. If you want to search for something, of course, you can use Command F and type what you want to search and search for that. But you can also select some text and use that for a search. If you look under Edit and then Find you'll see that Command E is Use Selection for Find. So by using Command E whatever you have selected goes into the Find View. But it doesn't do the Search. However, using Command G will Find Next. So if you've already searched for something, whether it's using Command E at first or you've typed something out, Command G will find the next one. So it's easy to go through an entire document looking for something, hitting Command G over and over again. So let's give that a try. For instance with this word selected here I'll do Command E to use that for the search. Then Command G will find the next one. Another Command G will find the next one after that. 
Now Command J in the Finder allows you to show the View options. But Command J in a Text App will actually jump to whatever the selection is. So say I've gone somewhere and I've selected some text. But now I've scrolled somewhere else, maybe to look something up and I want to jump right back to where the cursor is. Command J will do that. Another useful thing in most situations where you're typing text is to use Command T to bring up text options. So you could select some text and of course you've got the Format Sidebar here in Pages. You've got tons of stuff here under Format. But notice Command T is Show Fonts. You'll find the same things say in TextEdit. Do Command T and it brings up this little set of text options which allows you to select things like the font, the size, and a variety of different things here at the top depending upon what the app is capable of. So if you're not sure where to find how to change something with some text try Command T to bring up this control which will be universal between lots of different apps on the Mac. 
So here's another one in Safari. You might know Command I in the Finder, which brings up the Info window. But Command I does something different in Safari. In the Menu Bar you'll find it hidden under File, Share, Email this Page. Command I will do that. So if I use Command I here it will create a new email in my default email app. The subject will be the name of the page and it will include the contents of the page in the message. But I can change that in the Mail app to show the webpage, a pdf of the webpage, or just a link to the webpage. So if you find you often have to email either links or the contents of a webpage to somebody then Command I is definitely a shortcut you want to know. 
Now I told you I was only going to show you keyboard shortcuts that use Command and one other key. Well, I kind of lied because this last one actually requires the Shift key. The shortcut is Command question mark but you need the shift key to turn the slash key into a question mark. So Command Shift and then slash and it will bring up the Help Menu in the Menu Bar. Now what's the big deal here. I mean most of the time we don't read the Help information in an app. But searching in the Help Menu will actually show you menu commands. So, for instance, here in Pages if I wanted to find superscript I may not know what menu it's under. But if I start typing you could see it will find it and show me at the top. I can arrow down to it and it will actually then point out exactly where that command is. In this case it's Format Font Baseline Superscript. But I don't even have to navigate over to it to use it now. I can simply hit the Return key and it will activate that menu item. So you can access any menu item in the Menu Bar by using Command ? typing what the menu command is or at least enough letters to get you there and use Return to activate it. In the meantime you can learn where the actual menu item is for next time or even see what the keyboard shortcut is. Another thing you can do with this is by activating this you can now use the arrow keys to go to the left and go to different menus and use the other arrow keys to navigate around in here to activate any menu item without having to use the mouse or trackpad. Technically Control and F2 or Control fn and F2, depending upon your settings, will take you to the Apple Menu and you could do the same thing but it's much more reliable to use Shift Command Slash to start with the Help Menu. That works almost everywhere all the time. 
So I hope I've taught you a few new keyboard shortcuts that you may have not known before and perhaps this will make you more productive. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 3 Responses to “13 Major Mac Keyboard Shortcuts You Probably Aren't Using”

David A.

4 years ago

Gary – First off, you are doing a great service for Mac newbies. I subscribed to your YouTube channel because I often learn one or two things per episode (I'm a 30-year Mac user).

I was hoping to avoid minutes of watching by visiting your website and scanning for tips. I think you would agree that trying to scan the word-for-word transcript is laborious at best. My comment is not meant to diminish your efforts; I just wanted to leave some feedback. Bullets would be nice :-)

Ben

Thank you for putting together this invaluable resource.

Rocky

I use Cmd+W constantly, in fact I assigned it to the number keypad CLEAR button, since I don't really use that button for anything else. Firefox and many other apps use control+tab to switch between opened tabs or windows within an app (e.g., Adobe InDesign and Photoshop). Neither Word or the Adobe apps use the cmd+t, cmd+e, or cmd+j to bring up the text/font menu or search a text document. However, they do use cmd+g to go to the next find. I just mention these because they are rather popular.

Comments Closed.

13 Major Mac Keyboard Shortcuts You Probably Aren't Using

Comments: 3 Responses to “13 Major Mac Keyboard Shortcuts You Probably Aren't Using”

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